Wednesday, 3 September 2014

Big Brother Africa burns, start of new season on DStv cancelled

Cape Town – A Massive fire has engulfed M-Net's Big Brother Africa Hotshots
house at Sasani Studios, leading to the immediate cancellation of the
start of the the upcoming 9th season of the pan-African voyeur reality
show which was set to begin this Sunday 7 September on MultiChoice's
DStv satellite pay-TV platform.

No-one was injured in the blaze which engulfed the studio at Highlands North in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
The
cause of the fire which erupted and plunged the production into further
crisis is not know. Production company Endemol South Africa and M-Net
had no choice but to cancel the start of the show which has seen
multiple production challenges the past few weeks before the cameras had
even started rolling.
Due to stringent changes to South Africa's
visa regulations, Endemol South Africa first had to dump the originally
selected contestants from Ghana and start a frantic search for Ghana
residents already living in South Africa to put in the show.
Then
Endemol South Africa had to also jettison Rwanda and Sierra Leone as
countries from the 9th season which was set to start on Sunday with
highlight shows running on AfricaMagic Showcase (DStv 150) and two
24-hour DStv TV channels on channels 197 and 198.
After battling the blaze, M-Net and Endemol South Africa say that "due to a devastating fire at the Big Brother house, Big Brother Hotshots will not launch this Sunday as scheduled".
"The cause of the fire at this stage is unknown and investigations will commence as soon as it is safe to do so."
"At
this stage M-Net and Endemol are urgently looking for an alternative
Big Brother house in which to film the production, however as this
production has highly technical infrastructure, alternative camera and
edit requirements are not immediately available".
"Every effort
will be made to find a solution as quickly as possible to ensure that
Africa's biggest reality TV show will continue”.